Antidepressants and Recovery: 11 Lessons from Lived Experience with Depression

This article is a summary of a deeply candid episode of the Giving Voice to Depression podcast, hosted by Terry McGuire. In this conversation, longtime mental health advocate Michael Landsberg shares hard-earned truths about living with depression, battling stigma, and navigating antidepressant treatment. His voice is honest, unfiltered, and refreshingly human.

Through personal stories and lived experience, Landsberg helps reframe the conversation around antidepressants and depression—not as an abstract medical topic, but as something that deeply affects real lives. This episode doesn’t prescribe or preach. Instead, it opens space for honest reflection, hard conversations, and the reminder that you are not weak for struggling—or for seeking help.

Here are 11 powerful takeaways from the conversation.

1. Medication Doesn’t Make You Weak—It Might Make You Stronger

Michael Landsberg doesn’t shy away from discussing the full truth of his mental health struggles. He opens the episode with raw honesty about what depression has cost him—and what medication has given back.

Michael said:

I suffer from an illness called depression, also anxiety. I have been taken down by this illness. I have been left understanding why people take their own lives. I have given up years of my life to this illness that I will never, ever get back. I have spent time where I knew that I was living but not alive. I understood suicide. I’m on medication today. I will be the rest of my life. But you know what? I’m not ashamed. I’m not embarrassed. And most of all, I’m not weak.

This message is especially vital for people—often men—who have absorbed toxic cultural messages about toughness and self-reliance.

2. Stigma Can Be More Dangerous Than Depression

Throughout the conversation, both Landsberg and Terry reflect on how stigma prevents people from seeking help. For some, that resistance to treatment becomes generational.

Michael recalled:

My dad lived his whole life, since I was young, he drank every day. We never saw him smile. We knew that he was sick. But he said men do not go to psychiatrists or psychologists, men suck it up and do their job. And I’m my dad. Until I heard someone talking about this without shame and embarrassment, and without sounding weak, I always thought, ‘I can’t be that person.’ But then you hear someone say it, and it’s like, ‘Hey, I don’t care who knows, I want everyone to know.’ That’s empowering to other people.”

When we speak openly, we don’t just help ourselves—we free others to begin their healing.